Only Thy Love, Douce Mère

Nameless Eternal Being, Creatrix Supreme,
Grace Incarnate in a fragile body,
Who art beyond the Form and the Formless,
Beyond the zenith of our climbing,
Beyond the widest waking and the deepest sleep,
Only one boon we ask Thee to hasten Thy manifestation:
Transmute these earthen vessels into immaculate receptacles
And fill them with Thy transcendent Love,
Delight-content in the lotus-core of the Reality.
No Light can persuade the Night to mend her ways.
No power can bend the self-will of wind-blown thistledown.
No beauty can break through the armour of gloom and selfishness.
But Love conquers by surrendering Her omnipotence
To division, derision, violence and death.
All opposition succumbs to Her, worn out in the end
Like a sword that yields to water finding no resistance.

Only Love can reveal the Beloved
In a speck of dust caught in a sunbeam.
Only Love can prepare the destined hour
For the birth of the unborn Spirit.
Thy Love self-fulfilled gives and gives
And wants nothing in exchange, sustains the humble violets
And the majestic chrysanthemums with equal grace
Leads the unwilling blindness to illumination through tenderness,
Nurses with compassion the wounds of the victor
And the pride of the vanquished, and sees the promise of God
In each closed bud sleeping in the glow of the Dawn.
Love lies bleeding in the sand pierced through the heart by a jeering rabble
And transforms each particle into a crimson epiphany of sacrifice.
Power can obliterate a vast empire with a mere glance,
Break the frail bodies but cannot tame the indomitable spirit of man.
Knowledge can dazzle the mind with its prismatic splendour
Yet cannot change a sun-bleached mountain into a forest of orchids and ferns.

When Love smiles and rains down its sweetness,
Buried hope is resurrected; rocks melt into fountains and cascades,
Deserts stop their march towards barrenness,
Worms and caterpillars are exalted to a nobler sphere,
The Daemon locked in the mute heart of the atom is delivered.
Love finds the psychic lines of rapture,
Gathers the consecrated petals yearning
And unites them into a mystic gesture,
A symbol of close-linked harmony,
Pink meditation of a dedicated Rose.
Occult powers, riches and artistic faculties,
Though precious gifts, we lay them at Thy feet.
Only one boon we ask Thee to hasten Thy manifestation:
Transmute these earthen vessels into immaculate receptacles
And fill them with Thy transcendent Love,
Delight-content in the lotus-core of the Reality.

Love is the recondite name of the One,
The insoluble bond holding together
The Mansion of the manifold creation,
The ever-new mystery which knowledge cannot fathom.
Love is the foundation,
Love the stair of our ascension, the ring of fire
Which keeps the wolves at bay when falls the darkness,
The miracled tonic that prevents fatigue on the way,
The crown that awaits the seeker at the summit of aspiration.